The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 13

  INCUBUS

  Have there ever been incubi or succubi? Our learned juriconsults and demonologists admit both the one and the other.

  It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies and gentlemen with lascivious dreams, that he gathers the result common to such masculine dreams, and that he carries it neatly and still warm to the feminine reservoir for which it is destined by nature. It is this process which produced so many heroes and demigods in the days of antiquity.

  The devil took a great deal of superfluous trouble in this matter; he had only to leave the young people alone, and the world would have been sufficiently supplied with heroes without any assistance from him.

  An idea may be formed of incubi by this explanation of the great Delrio, of Boguets, and other writers learned in sorcery; but they do not account for succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio being very favorable to the assumption. The devil in this case has deposited in her the essential substance taken from a young man’s dream; she is pregnant, and gives birth without reproach; the devil has been her incubus. But if the devil wishes to be a succubus, it is quite another matter. He has then to become a she-devil, and a man’s seed must enter her. It is this she-devil who is then bewitched by a man, and she who bears the child. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly and decorously; Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and Semele; Thetis in person, the succubus of Peleus, and Venus of Anchises, without having recourse to the various contrivances of our extraordinary demonism.

  Let us simply observe, that the gods frequently disguised themselves, in their pursuit of our girls, sometimes as an eagle, sometimes as a pigeon, a swan, a horse. a shower of gold; but the goddesses assumed no disguise: they had only to show themselves, to please. It must however be presumed, that whatever shapes the gods assumed to steal a march, they consummated their loves in the form of men. Jupiter could not take his pleasure of Danae while he was only gold, and he would have been very much embarrassed with Leda—as she would have been also—had he been only a swan; but he became a god again, that is to say, a handsome young man, and all was well.

  As to the new manner of rendering girls pregnant by the ministry of the devil, it is not to be doubted, for the Sorbonne decided the point in the year 1318.

  “Per tales artes et ritus impios et invocationes et demonum, nullus unquam sequatur effectus ministerio demonum, error.”—“It is an error to believe, that these magic arts and invocations of the devils are without effect.”

  This decision has never been revoked. Thus we are bound to believe in succubi and incubi, because our teachers have always believed in them.

  There have been many other sages in this science, as well as the Sorbonne. Bodin, in his book concerning sorcerers, dedicated to Christopher de Thou, first president of the Parliament of Paris, relates that John Hervilier, a native of Verberie, was condemned by that parliament to be burned alive for having prostituted his daughter to the devil, a great black man, whose semen was icy cold. This would seem contrary to the devil’s nature, but our jurisprudence has always admitted that the devil’s sperm is cold, and the prodigious number of sorcerers which it has burned in consequence will always remain a proof of its accuracy.

  The celebrated Picus of Mirandola—a prince never lies—says he knew an old man of the age of eighty years who had slept half his life with a female devil, and another of seventy who enjoyed a similar felicity. Both were buried at Rome, but nothing is said of the fate of their children. Thus is the existence of incubi and succubi demonstrated.

  It is impossible, at least, to prove to the contrary; for if we are called on to believe that devils can enter our bodies, who can prevent them from taking kindred liberties with our wives and our daughters? And if there are devils, there are probably she-devils; for to be consistent, if the demons beget children on our females, it must follow that we do the same thing on the bodies of the female demons. Never has there been a more universal empire than that of the devil. What has dethroned him? Reason.

  INTOLERANCE

  Read the article on Intolerance in the great Encyclopedia. Read the treatise on Toleration composed on occasion of the dreadful assassination of Jean Calas, a citizen of Toulouse; and if, after that, you allow of persecation in matters of religion, compare yourself at once to Ravaillac. Ravaillac, you know, was highly intolerant. The following is the substance of all the discourses ever delivered by the intolerant:

  You monster: who will be burned to all eternity in the next world, and whom I will myself burn as soon as ever I can in this, you really have the insolence to read de Thou and Bayle, who have been put on the index at Rome! When I was preaching to you in the name of God, how Samson had killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, your head, still harder than the arsenal from which Samson obtained his arms, showed me by a slight movement from left to right that you believed nothing of what I said. And when I stated that the devil Asmodeus, who out of jealousy twisted the necks of the seven husbands of Sarah among the Medes, was put in chains in upper Egypt, I saw a small contraction of your lips, in Latin called cachinnus (a grin), which plainly indicated to me that in the privacy of your mind you hold the history of Asmodeus in derision.

  And as for you, Isaac Newton; Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and elector of Brandenburg; John Locke; Catherine, empress of Russia, victorious over the Ottomans; John Milton; the beneficent sovereign of Denmark; Shakespeare; the wise king of Sweden; Leibnitz; the august house of Brunswick; Tillotson; the emperor of China; the Parliament of England; the Council of the great Mogul; in short, all you who do not believe one word which I have taught in my courses on divinity, I declare to you, that I regard you all as pagans and publicans, as, in order to engrave it on your unimpressible brains, I have often told you before. You are a set of callous miscreants; you will all go to gehenna, where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched; for I am right, and you are all wrong; and I have grace and you have none. I regularly confess three devout ladies of my neighborhood, while you do not confess a single one; I have executed the mandates of bishops, as you have never done; I have abused philosophers in the language of the fishmarket, while you have protected, imitated, or equaled them; I have composed pious defamatory libels, stuffed with infamous calumnies, and you have never so much as read them. I say mass every day in Latin for fourteen sous, and you are never even so much as present at it, any more than Cicero, Cato, Pompey, Caesar, Horace, or Virgil, were ever present at it—consequently you deserve each of yuu to have your right hand cut off, your tongue cut out, to be put to the torture, and at last burned at a slow fire; for God is merciful.

  Such, without the slightest abridgment, are the maxims of the intolerant, and the sum and substance of all their books. How delightful to live with such amiable people!

  KISSING

  The young people of both sexes must forgive me, for they may not find here what they will probably seek. This article is only for scholars and serious persons, to whom it might seem hardly suitable at first blush.

  There is but too much business of kissing in the comedies of Molière’s day. Champagne, in La Mère Coquette by Quinault, asks Laurette to kiss him; whereupon she says, “You are not satisfied? Really, I am ashamed of you! I have already kissed you twice.” And Champagne answers her: “What! you kiss by count?* The valets were always begging kisses of the lady’s maids; people were busy kissing all over the stage. It was usually very dull and boring, particularly in the case of ugly actors, who were positively nauseating.

  If the reader wants kisses, let him look for them in Pastor Fido, which has one entire chorus devoted to nothing but kisses while the whole play is based solely on a kiss that Mirtillo gave one fine day to beautiful Amarilli, during a game of blind man’s buff—un bacio molto saporito.

  Everyone knows the chapter on kisses, in which Jean de la Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, says that people may k
iss each other from head to foot. He pities people with big noses who can approach each other only with difficulty; and he advises long-nosed ladies to have flat-nosed lovers.

  The kiss was a very ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient times. Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Caesar, kissed his face, hand, and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his father-in-law, returned from Rome, Domitian received him with a coid kiss, said nothing to him, and left him confounded in the crowd. The inferior who could not aspire to greet his superior by kissing him, put his mouth to his own hand, and threw him a kiss which the other returned in the same way, if he so desired.

  This salutation was used even for worshiping the gods. Job, in his parable, which is perhaps the oldest of known books, says that he has not worshiped the sun and the moon like the other Arabs, that he has not carried his hand to his mouth as he looked at these heavenly bodies.

  In our Occident nothing remains of this ancient custom but the puerile and genteel civility that is still taught to children in some small towns, of kissing their right hands when someone has given them some sweets.

  It was a horrible thing to betray with a kiss; it was this which made Caesar’s assassination still more hatefuL We know all about Judas’s kisses; they have become proverbial.

  Joab, one of David’s captains, being very jealous of Amasa, another captain, said to him: “Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him.” While with his other hand he drew his sword and “smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to the ground.”

  No other kiss is to be found connected with the other fairly frequent murders which were committed among the Jews, unless it be perhaps the kisses which Judith gave to the captain Holophernes, before cutting off his head, while he was in bed asleep; but no mention is made of them, and the thing is merely probable.

  In one of Shakespeare’s tragedies called Othello, this Othello, who is a Negro, kisses his wife twice before strangling her. This may seem abominable to decent people; but Shakespeare’s partisans say it is beautifully natural, particularly in the case of a Negro.

  When Giovanni Galeas Sforza was assassinated in Milan Cathedral, on St. Stephen’s day; when the two Medici were killed in the Reparata church; when Admiral Coligny, the Prince of Orange, the Maréchal d’Ancre, the brothers Witt, and so many others were murdered, at least they were not kissed.

  The ancients must have considered the kiss as somehow symbolic and sacred, since they kissed the statues of their gods, and the beards of the statues, when the sculptors had given them beards. Initiates kissed each other at the mysteries of Ceres, as a sign of concord.

  The early Christians, men and women, kissed each other on the mouth in their agapae. This word signified “love-feast.” They gave each other the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, the kiss of brother and sister. This custom lasted for more than four centuries, and was abolished at last on account of its consequences. It was these kisses of peace, these agapae of love, these names of “brother” and “sister,” that long drew down upon the little-known Christians those imputations of debauchery with which the priests of Jupiter and the priestesses of Vesta charged them. You may see in Petronius, and in other profane authors, that libertines called themselves “brother” and “sister.” It was thought that among the Christians the same names signified the same infamies. They were innocent accomplices in spreading these accusations over the Roman empire.

  There were in the beginning seventeen different Christian societies, just as there were nine among the Jews, including the two kinds of Samaritans. The societies which flattered themselves on being the most orthodox accused the others of the most inconceivable obscenities. The term of “gnostic,” which was at first so honorable, signifying “learned,” “enlightened,” “pure,” became a term of horror and scorn, a reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that the men and women of this sect began by tickling each other, that they then exchanged very immodest kisses, and that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses. When a husband presented a young initiate to his wife, he said to her: “Have an agape with my brother.” And they had an agape.

  We do not dare repeat here, in the chaste French tongue, what Saint Epiphanius adds in Greek (Epiphanius, contra haeres, lib. I, vol. ii). We will say merely that perhaps this saint was somewhat imposed upon, that he allowed himself to be carried away by zeal, and that all heretics are not hideous debauchees.

  The sect of Pietists, in imitation of the early Christians, give each other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each other “my brother” or “my sister”; or so, at least, I was told some twenty years ago, by a very pretty and very human Pietist lady. The ancient custom was to kiss on the mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it.

  There was no other manner of greeting ladies in France, Germany, Italy, England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, even in Spain. What is odd is that they did not have the same prerogative in France, where ladies always enjoyed more liberty than anywhere else; but “every country has its ceremonies,” and there is no usage so general that chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It would have been an incivility, an affront, for a respectable woman, when she received a nobleman’s first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his mustaches. “It is a displeasing custom,” says Montaigne, “and offensive to ladies, to have to lend their lips to anyone who has three serving-men in his suite, disagreeable though he be.” Yet this custom was the oldest in the world.

  If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to yield itself out of courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there is considerable danger when fresh, red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years of age are involved; and this is what finally brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the mysteries and the agapae. This is what caused women to be confined among the Orientals, so that they might kiss only their fathers and their brothers; a custom long ago introduced into Spain by the Arabs.

  Here is the danger: there is one nerve, of the fifth pair, which goes from the mouth to the heart, and thence even lower. With what delicate industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, their fine, ticklish skin, produce in them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy to a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may suffer from a lengthily savored kiss collaborated in by two Pietists of eighteen.

  It should be noted that only men, turtle-doves, and pigeons, are acquainted with kisses; thence came the Latin word columbatim, which our language has not been able to translate. There is nothing which has not been abused. The kiss, designed by nature for the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes which do not seem made for this usage. One knows of what the Templars were accused.

  We cannot honestly treat this interesting subject at greater length, although Montaigne says: “One should speak of it shamelessly. We boldly talk of killing, wounding, and betraying; but of this one thing we dare speak only in whispers.”

  LAWS

  Sheep live very placidly together, and they are considered very easygoing, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals they devour. It is possible, of course, that they eat them innocently and without knowing it, as we do when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic of the sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age.

  A chicken-run is obviously the most perfect monarchie state. There is no king comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his people, it is not out of vanity. If an enemy approaches, he does not order his subjects to go fcrth to kill themselves for his sake, by virtue of his infallible wisdom and plenary power; he goes to battle himself, ranges his chickens behind him and fights to the death. If he is the victor, he himself sings the Te Deum. In civil life there is no one so gallant, so honest, so disinterested. The cock has all the virtues. If his roy
al beak holds a grain of corn, or a grub, he gives it to the first lady among his subjects who presents herself. Solomon in his harem did not even approach a barnyard cock.

  If it is true that bees are governed by a queen to whom all her subjects make love, then the bees enjoy a still more perfect government.

  Ants are considered to be excellent democrats. Democracy is above all the other states, because in a democracy everyone is equal, and each individual works for the good of all. The republic of the beavers is superior to even that of the ants, at least if we judge by their masonry work. As for the monkeys, they resemble strolling players rather than a civilized people; and they do not appear to be united under fixed, fundamental laws, as are the species previously mentioned.

  We resemble the monkeys more than any other animal, by virtue of our gift of mimicry, the frivolity of our ideas, and the inconstancy which has never permitted us to establish uniform and durable laws.

  When nature formed our species, she gave us certain instincts: self-esteem for our preservation, benevolence for the preservation of others, love which is common to all species, and the inexplicable gift of combining more ideas than all the animals together. Then, having given us our portion, she said to us: “Do as you can.”

  No country has a good code of laws. The reason for this is evident: the laws have been made according to the time, the place, the need, etc.

  When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained have become ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the drinking of wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are injurious. But it is absurd at Constantinople.